This image shows only the swells directed at El Porto Beach that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal June. It is based on 2786 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs.

The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 42% of the time, equivalent to 13 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal June. Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with forecast offshore winds, and given the fact that El Porto Beach is exposed to open water swells, we think that that clean surf can be found at El Porto Beach about 42% of the time and that surf is blown out by onshore wind 54% of the time. This is means that we expect 29 days with waves in a typical June, of which 13 days should be clean enough to surf.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.